Fluchtgepäck

Based on the expansive correspondence of the eminent philologist Eduard Berend (1883–1973), this essay reconstructs the multifaceted history of his exquisite Jean-Paul-collection, which, in 1957, became a cornerstone of the newly established Deutsches Literaturarchiv (DLA) in Marbach. Upon the invitation of the DLA, Berend, a refugee from Nazi Germany who had spent 17 years in exile in Geneva, was able to continue his work on the historical-critical edition of the works of Jean Paul (born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1825), one of Germany’s most prolific writers of the Classical-Romantic period. The Prussian Academy of Sciences had commissioned the critical edition in the Weimar era, and Berend had begun work on it in 1927. But, as a result of Nazi racial policy, he had been removed as the editor in 1938. The return of Berend and his Jean-Paul-Archiv mark the beginning of the DLA’s history as an exceptional research center not just for exile literature but also of and for exiled scholars.

Scholars and Literati at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (1700–1800)

This note is a summary description of the set of scholars and literati who participated in the activities of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, from its inception in 1700 to the eve of the Industrial Revolution (1800).

Sur le progres des sciences

This paper investigates the Baconian roots of Maupertuis’s Lettre XIX. Sur le Progrès des Sciences (1752). The Letter was published almost a decade after Maupertuis had accepted Frederick II’s invitation to move from Paris to Berlin and become the new President of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Contrary to the secondary literature that identifies a distinction between Maupertuis’s Parisian and Berliner phases, this paper argues that there is in fact greater continuity between the two. Based on a reading that empha­sizes the programmatic and methodological commonalities between Bacon’s project in De augmentis scientiarum (1623) and Maupertuis’s Lettre XIX, this paper argues that, in a Baconian fashion, Maupertuis combines the roles of the “scientist” and the “natural philosopher” into an integrated plan of action with both intellectual an institutional aims. One of Maupertuis’s aims was to highlight the importance of observation and experiment not only in the development of natural philosophy but also for some aspects of speculative philosophy, while another of his aims was to reinvigorate the structure of the Berlin Academy and to model it the fashion of other similar European intellectual projects of that time.

Pechstein, Max (1881–1955)

The Saxon painter Max Pechstein was hailed as one of the leading representatives of modern painting in Germany throughout the 1910s and 1920s, but played a comparatively minor role in the canonization of German Expressionism after 1945. Pechstein first gained notoriety through his affiliation with the artist’s group Die Brücke from 1906 until 1912. He only came to the attention of a wider art public by way of his involvement in the controversial exhibition society Neue Secession in Berlin in May 1910 for which he served as president, designing its legendary first poster and catalog cover (see figure). Pechstein featured prominently in Paul Fechter’s 1914 book Der Expressionismus which presented him as the figurehead of Die Brücke in Dresden and Berlin (much to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s annoyance). Pechstein continued to paint and to exhibit throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Despite being included in the notorious 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition, and expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts, he remained a member of the Reich Chamber of Arts throughout the Nazi dictatorship, and was the first of the so-called "degenerate artists" to receive permission to exhibit again in private galleries in 1939. The first retrospective of his work after his death (in Berlin in 1959) signaled the art historical focus on the early period of his career during the Brücke years at the expense of his later oeuvre.

Benn, Gottfried (1886–1956)

A practising physician throughout his life, Benn ranks among the most influential and controversial twentieth-century German poets and intellectuals. After achieving notoriety with the Expressionist poem cycle Morgue und andere Gedichte, Benn published poems, novellas, essays and dramas leading up to his election to the Prussian Academy in 1932. Benn was an outspoken supporter of the Nazi Party from 30 January 1933 until 30 June 1934 (the ‘Night of the Long Knives’), when he withdrew from the party in disillusionment. Following a publication ban in 1938, Benn spent the remainder of the Nazi era writing privately. Banned by the Allies until 1948, Benn regained prominence due to his poetry collection Statische Gedichte (1948; Static Poems, 1991) and essays such as ‘Probleme der Lyrik’ (1951). Benn received the Büchner Prize in 1951, though his affiliation with the Nazis complicates his cultural legacy.

Kollwitz, Käthe (1867–1945)

Käthe Kollwitz (née Schmidt) was born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1867, the fifth child of Karl and Katharina Schmidt. In 1884 she entered the drawing and painting school of the Association of Women Artists in Berlin and then the Women’s School of Art in Munich. In Berlin she trained under Karl Stauffer-Bern who introduced her to the work of Max Klinger. Klinger’s 1891 treatise, Malerei und Zeichnung, was crucial to Kollwitz’s early decision to abandon painting in favor of the graphic arts. Kollwitz married social democrat doctor Karl Kollwitz in 1891 and moved with him to his surgery in Berlin’s east-end tenement district, the inhabitants of which became a major source for Kollwitz’s art. The couple bore two sons, Peter and Hans. In 1914 Peter died in action at the Front, further politicizing Kollwitz’s practice against suffering humanity during the Weimar era. Stylistically, Kollwitz remained indebted to naturalism with preferred subject matter of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, especially mothers and children, rendered with an expressionist sensitivity and symbolic resonance. With the rise of Hitler in 1933 Kollwitz was dismissed from her professorship at the Prussian Academy of Arts, labelled a ‘‘degenerate artist,’’ and her studio closed. She died in 1945, survived by her youngest son Hans.